Revelations Of A Darker Kind
by SeltzerBaby
Summary: Sixteen years have passed since Clarice Starling drove to the Verger Estate with the intent to rescue Doctor Hannibal Lecter, and Starling is slowly realizing that nothing will ever be the same, and that everyone she loves is running out of time.
1. Handle With Care

**Hello! This is my first Lecter fic, so be gentle, but tell me what you think of it, becasue otherwise I won't know what you like or dislike or hate with a firey passion!**

**Disclaimer-I do not, nor will I ever, own the Hannibal Lecter Series**

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><p>Clarice Starling woke that morning in a cold sweat from a dream made of memories that she couldn't bear to remember. Her alarm had been the reason the shatters of deluded memories had finally freed her, and she already heard rustlings from the room across the hall. A small smile came to her mouth as she rolled out of bed, knowing that Maelie would already be up and preparing breakfast by the time she got downstairs. Starling threw on the uniform for her job at the Baltimore Police Department, and did something that she rarely cared to do-she looked at herself in the mirror. Even though at forty-nine she certainly wasn't as young as she used to be, she had aged with a certain beauty and grace that kept her looking fine.<p>

A buzz from the phone on her nightstand sent her spiraling back into reality from the locked place inside her mind. The caller I.D. said, quite simply. 'Ardelia' and Starling picked it up with a flourish.

The sound from the other end was busy and loud and sweetly chaotic; it was the bustling music of a household fully filled by personalities and well-structured havoc. Ardelia herself was just as neat as she had ever been when she and Starling shared a duplex, but now she had the added burden of three children with her husband's spirit.

"Benson! Let go of Frankie right now! Oh, hi Clarice!"

Ardelia had changed. She had married, settled down and, amazingly, become a housewife.

"Morning, Mrs. Derby. How're the kids?"

Ardelia sighed at Starling's steady accent, as faint as it had become over the years; they had switched positions since Starling had left the F.B.I. Now, if she wanted to escape the chaos of her own home, it was known that Ardelia was allowed to come over and sit in the quiet of the Starling household.

"Oh, they're good, they're good. Benny's excited to go to work with Darren, Frankie can't wait until it's his turn, and Catherine is still my grandmother reincarnated. How's my Maelie doing?"

Starling felt a twinge at the possessive in Ardelia's sentence. She knew that it was only coincidental, but she couldn't help the fact. By this time Starling had made it to the kitchen where, as predicted, Maelie was in the midst of doling out a hearty breakfast of goat cheese omelets, toast, bacon and hand-squeezed orange juice.

"Making breakfast as usual. She's so picky about the ingredients it's as if she wants to supervise the slaughtering of the pigs!"

That drew a slight, amused smile from Maelie as the two of them sat down for breakfast.

"Alright, I've got to go. I'm getting the 'Mom It's Rude To Be On The Phone At The Table' look. Dinner tonight? Belle Giornate at 8? Bring the whole family-we'll make a party out of it! Bye, Ardelia."

Starling repented, and causally observed the child that was somehow hers. As they chatted and ate, china clicking bell tolls through the perfect quiet, she once again tried to find Paul Krendler in Maelie Starling's mysterious features. Starling herself was quite visible there. It was her nose and mouth on the delicate, attractive face, and so was the pale, creamy skin. The fit, slender body was hers as well, streamlined, small and sleek, built for movement and high-endurance activities, sheltered by outfits far classier then most at her age. The fifteen year olds strong sense of right and wrong, along with her strict ethics of justice, were so clearly her mother's it was laughable.

But there were parts of her that Starling just didn't understand.

Thirteen years ago, when she had arrived in Washington, D.C. via plane, holding hands with a sprightly two year old, with no recollection of the last three years of her life, they told her that Paul Krendler had raped her. There had been a call, they said, admitting to his murder, and stating that as the reason for it. She had been unable to prove them wrong, as she could remember nothing after being hit on the Verger estates by what she assumed to be a tranquilizer gun, they had no reason to disbelieve the caller, and DNA tests proved inconclusive. So they told her that the child, who called herself Maelie, was the product of Paul Krendler.

But Starling simply couldn't see it. There were certainly paternal aspects to her daughter, certain things that resounded through Starling's memory like a gong, traits that came from a father she couldn't seem to place.

The child didn't have Starling's auburn hair. Hers was dark, flowing and sleek, as if each strand had been ripped off the head of one with wealth and status. This made sense, in essence, as it almost matched Krendler's in shade. Her eyes, too, made it seem as if belonging Starling was a lie, through and through. They were also dark, and colorless, and closed. There had been rumors, whispers tossed around locker rooms and closer-door parties, that if you started into her eyes for long enough, she would do the almost impossible and stare back, eyes alighting with such a frightening glare that you could trick yourself into seeing something pin wheeling around down there in the dark.

Her voice is what was concerning.

"Mom, is something wrong?" Starling, preoccupied with her musings as she so often was, was snapped back by her voice.

She knew it from somewhere, of that she was absolutely certain. Where, though, she just couldn't place. In her dreams her daughter's voice ricocheted off the walls of a brick-laden hall, echoing taunts and playful jibes at her, as she advanced ever down the hall, never finding the end, but dreading when she does with a sordid excitement of sorts. It was low, far lower than Starling's West Virginia chimes, but still had a sensual, feminine appeal in the harsh rasp of its growl.

"What? Oh, no I was just thinking."

Starling smiled the slightest bit, reassurance oozing from between her lips, thinking only about what she would have to do to trick her daughter into believing she was fine and not falling into her own head as she so often did.

There was a dark, raised eyebrow in need of her attention.

'You know the missing man-Christopher Gell; I used to work with him before he got dirty. It's kept me a little preoccupied."  
>Starling could tell she knew she was lying, but she also knew Maelie would leave it at that.<p>

Glancing at the clock, she realized they were running late.

"Grab your stuff, put the plates in the sink, get in the car-go, quickly!"

Starling ran with a fervent haste; Maelie strode with a smooth confidence, and she made it to the car first. Starling dashed outside, realized she forgot her keys, and ran back in.

The phone began to ring.

Starling ignored it and grabbed the key-ring from the living room table, barely registering the blaring noise as it moved from the second ring, to the third and the fourth and the fifth.

She had her hand on the doorknob and it had just begun to turn when the caller left their message.

"Hello, Clarice."

The buzz of the disconnecting tone seemed to last forever.

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	2. A Nickel For Your Thoughts

**Hello again ! Same drill, read and review :) If it's been a while, I'm sorry, but I haven't been home! ENJOY :D**

**Disclaimer-I don't own any characters except the ones I made up, nor do I own the origional sotry line, or Thomas Harris.**

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><p>Maelie waited in the car for what seemed like forever, sitting silently until she could take it no more. Sighing at her mother's air-headedness, she slid out of the car and opened the door to hear two words being spoken in the kitchen.<p>

"Hello, Clarice."

The voice ran through to her core, resonated through her head, but she filed it away for later investigation, as she had more tearing problems at the moment.

"Mom?" She followed the automated voice instructing her mother to delete the message, save for further use, or replay.

When Maelie got to the kitchen, her mother was hunched over the phone, trying to replay the message with shaking fingers and the wild eyes of a crazed beast. She looked up at Maelie without recognition, all the energy in her mind focused on the phone and the caller, and Maelie decided that she had to remember who that voice belonged to, because one day it might be a matter of life and death-not hers, but her mothers.

"Mom, shhh, it's okay, it's okay." She wrapped up her mother in her arms, one slight form to the next, comforting her like always, keeping her from falling into the unstable pit of her own mind. After a while, Starling calmed down, stopped clutching desperately at the phone and her daughter's shoulders, and pushed her away.

"I'm fine, Mae, I'm fine. It was just a very old….business associate of mine, who screwed me over one to many times. Haven't heard from him in years, and I don't want the same thing to happen to you."

Maelie didn't understand why her mother was so upset about a business associate, but she decided that her mother's sanity was of more concern for right now, and pushed that away in the same folder as the voice on the machine.

"Now-let's go to work."

By the time they finally got in the car, it was fifteen minutes past the time they were supposed to leave-add that to the coffee break and they were going to be way late.

"I've got to make a call, alright? Entertain yourself for a few minutes."

Maelie nodded, already sketching away on her notepad, as she always was, barely listening to the words as she drew a portrait of her mother.

"Hey Darren?"

She drew a flurry of hair, thinning with age but luxurious in a throwaway style, in a tangled mess around a perfect face.

"I need to call in a favor…"

A striking blue ball gown with a deep neckline and slits up to the thighs, sitting on a stool in a fancy restaurant of some sort.

"We're running late today…"

The restaurant is classy, filled with forms of other women in dresses, men in tuxedos, waiters dressed in silk suits, the other people only shadowy figures, except for one other.

"Yeah, and we still didn't get coffee…"

The man sitting behind Starling is outlined in sharp black, half hard angles and half smooth curves. His face was missing, his features meaningless, but he was decked out in a fine suit, a drink in hand and a foot on her mother's chair.

"Would you do that?"

Her hands were curved and cracked, one holding onto the receiver of a phone, claws in the form of fingers, the other grasping the edge of the seat with a determination that shook her to the core.

"You're the best!"

She wore thick army boots under the sheen of her dress.

"Call me if anything happens..."

Her face was a mess of pain and hunger, scrunched up one way and slacked the next, waiting for something and fearing it at the same time, wild recognition in her eyes.

"Bye, Darren."

The man's face had a pair of curving lips, the lips of royalty, and they were smeared with discord and a sick kind of want.

Starling hung up the phone, and Maelie flipped the page over discreetly.

"So what're you drawing now?"

"I don't know yet; I didn't start."

"You should draw Ardelia's family-her anniversary is coming up soon, you know."

Maelie smiled a fake smile, secretly wishing her mother was stable enough to see the thing she drew.

They arrived at the station just as a call was coming in. Maelie stuck with Starling but Benson, who idolized the fifteen year old, ran away from his dad and trotted right up to her. At thirteen, he had been around Maelie since he was born, and he had grown to love her in a pseudo-romantic way.

"Hi Maelie!"

She offered him a small smile, just enough to keep him wanting more, but she continued to follow her mother and Benson continued to follow her.

Then Darren, the station Chief, threw down the phone and said "We've got a murder case. It appears that Christopher Gell has been found, but we don't know the specifics yet. First three officers out the door get the case. Starling didn't scramble, as she was the head detective here, so she knew that they would go back to give her the case.

"Hey Starling, come here a sec." With time to lose, she fell back.

"I don't want you on this case." He didn't look her in the eyes, just kept shuffling papers on his desk.

"What? Why?"

"There are things about the case that I didn't report to the rest of the officers. His cheeks, along with slabs of meat from his back, are missing, and it appears that someone extracted his thymus."

Starling's blood ran cold, and behind her, her daughter listened intently, starting a new drawing of a man on the side of a road, cut up and bled out.

"Has…" Starling swallowed in a desperate attempt to rid the fear. "Has anyone proven it yet?"

"No, but it's been whispered around the crime scene investigators, and we're almost sure at this time."

"If you can't prove it, you can't legally keep me off the case. I'm going. Maelie, let's go."

Giving Darren a slick smile, Maelie added another thing to her drawing.

A plate, made of fine china and bloodied with the man's life, sat next to the body.

Maelie knew exactly who they were talking about.

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	3. Never Let Me Go

**Hello! So here's chapter three...might not be quite as long as the others, but I hope you enjoy! Reviews are the best!**

**Disclaimer-I don't own the SOTL franchise or Thomas Harris.**

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><p>There used to be a set of three apartment buildings in Baltimore. It wasn't that they were the only ones, which the most certainly weren't, but they now hold a bloody history as they fall into desecration. They were each a full level of a lush three story building, finely decorated to attract the kind of clientele with the wealth to afford a prolonged visit, but don't bother looking for them now if you're hoping for a pleasant stay in Baltimore. Many hotels would welcome your presence, especially if you plan on twittering your money away on their fine delicacies, and the apartment buildings that were rented for the last time are now useless.<p>

They had an infamous leave a famous scene behind many years ago, and the repercussions of that have caused them to slowly fall into ruin, priceless paintings curling up around the edges, and paint letting its fine chips fall to decorate the floor.

Here he is now. Back in the day when the lovely buildings were in use, but not long before the incident, he came and booked all three apartments, paying in cash. The landlord understood. This was a place where many a dark deed was committed, and leaving behind no evidence was a necessary devil. If only he had run for the phone when he saw the slight slippage of a contact lens, and had assumed the color beneath was a trick of the light.

The man is returning to his apartments after making a call from a pay phone across town. He had not expected there to be an answer. He had in fact been enjoying the idea of his recipients surprise when she listened to the message, short as it may be. He knew that she was a little unstable. Would there be tears? The sudden rush of memories held behind a gate of hypnotics and forced prejudices? Or a viscous hate that emptied itself out onto the floor? He had come prepared for all scenarios, good and bad, and he didn't intend to leave without his prizes.

He was even prepared for the complete emotional breakdown that she had in front of her daughter, though he didn't yet know that that was the course of action he would have to take.

It had so far been a lonely existence, with three brief years of stability thrown in to test his mettle. He did not believe in God or heaven-for what creature supposedly of that good nature would allow him to live?-but when he followed the course of his own life, he sometimes toyed with the idea of Hell, and that he had been sent as its tool.

No.

He did not believe in those things. He merely played with the ideas as a child plays with its toys.

But his missed his love, and he missed his child. He had waited for her seven years, then twelve more after that.

Nineteen years.

Nineteen years was a long time to keep him waiting, and he had deemed the two people he cared for most ready for his arrival.

Preparations had been made.

The two lower floors of the building had been converted into splendid rooms for his future guests. He had examined their tastes, their lifestyle, everything about them that would add to his knowledge of their personas. As mentioned prior, he had come prepared. Four months on waiting and adding to stockpiles and files of his beloveds, four months of waiting and watching and slowly insinuating himself once again into their lives. Certain items he couldn't bring across borders had been once again supplied, and he was almost satisfied.

The victim had been planted.

The body of a man close to his love had been found, as one tricky phone call to the Baltimore Police Department's main office had proven. He had been sure to leave the marks of his modus operandi, his calling card, as one may say. He wanted to be identified. He needed to make sure that they knew he was back in town. Fear was a useful weapon for one to have on his side. Besides, he needed to leave his love a message, one that she couldn't mass over with her loss of memory. That tactic had been tried, and failed. Something much more upfront was needed.

Certain seeds of doubt had been sown.

The only thing he had left to do was wait until the time came to approach them.

He was ready. He could wait the slightest bit longer if need be. He had things to busy himself with, such as the job he had acquired in much the same way he had acquired his position in Florence.

'_What a pity,'_ he thought '_that the similarities are obvious and yet no one has put them together. I wonder…'_

He did not pause in his reading to take a sip of wine, taking in the words, the taste of the red liquid, and his thoughts all at once.

As a psychiatrist who examined him once in his youth had said long ago…

"_He follows several trains of though at once, without distraction from any, and one of those trains is always for his own amusement._"

That same psychiatrist also said that if one pushed him too hard they would lose him forever, and that he would not be quite the same. Though he had no notion of the prediction the psychiatrist made, the man we now see here went and proved him right many years ago, in a time much unlike our own.

This encounter is far after the events that broke him, and that train of thought never ends well, and he is still wondering.

_'Could she do it? If she has paid attention to anything that has happened to her in life, if she has the ability to make those treacherous leaps…could she?'_

He turns from his book, now focusing his attention fully on the wine and the pressing matters at hand.

He believes that she can. He has a knowledge of her that makes him believe that she was much like him, that the paternal aspects of her would allow her to link the pieces in her mind.

Perhaps she already knew. That thought giddied him. If that was the case, there would be no problem with his scheme whatsoever. However, if she was more like her mother than he anticipated, which was only a small chance given his research, then he would be discovered and set to death by injection.

He was prepared to face the consequences. They were living fine now, even if she was a little unstable at times, and they would suffer no serious loss at his passing. The only loss would be his, and he had strengthened himself for every possibility, even the ones that he most despised.

He wondered about death as well. He would, on occasion, allow himself to toy with the idea of seeing Mischa after he passed, but he hardly saw any truth in the matter of life after death.

Perhaps he should bring that up as well when he finally spoke with her. Twelve years is a very long time, and people could change in an instant. He would test her thoroughly and see if her views were similar to his. If they had changed, he had more work to do than he hoped, but he had planned for that, as well as if they had not. The latter was the choice he agreed with most. Her talents, her memory, and the reports of the occasional times she got in trouble, even the way she wrote-it all pointed to her being much more like him.

This thought thrilled him. He is looking forward to having his love and his child with him again, and this time he does not intend on letting them slip out of his grasp. There will be no more bowstrings that have the audacity to wake up his beloved from her waking trance. He will not allow for it. While no plan could ever be perfectly fool-proof, his is most certainly the closet there has ever been.

A boy of perhaps thirteen enters the room.

The man decides that he looks deceptively like his father.

The boy has an accent that appears to be French, but his speech is eloquent; he has been taught well, even if it is proven that he does not come from this country. He asks is he should serve more wine, or perhaps he asks if everything is fine. We are already miles away, following the man's mind as it flits through the streets, to a blockaded road across town where a body has just been discovered.

The boy has fled the fine study, almost as if he has had a premonition of the horrors that will occur in this very room not more than a month from now. These are the horrors that will finally shut the apartments down, and we hold the curse of being witness to them.

But we're not thinking about that now, and we did not hear Doctor Hannibal Lecter answer the boy's question, for we have been far too caught up in the splendor's of his memory palace.

He is currently reflecting upon his meal last night with Christopher Gell.

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